Bless This Mess

Snapshot 09.24.14

– We’re entering week 3 of me being sick, but I appear to be finally getting better. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me. I’m frustrated at how behind I am on everything and how lethargic I’ve been. Any free time I’ve had I spent laying on the couch or the bed or the floor and slept if at all possible. This virus just wore me down, literally, to the ground and I didn’t want to get up. Prolonged sickness always makes me depressed, and this was no exception. I lost my voice totally and even when I could talk again in Janis Joplin-like tones I still couldn’t sing which is something I do nearly constantly around the house. I tried, I really did, but anything above a hoarse whisper refused to come out. Everyone in this house got this virus, but no one succumbed to it as badly as I did. It took so long for me to even get sick I had hoped I had some weird immunity to it. Instead by body was just gearing up for destruction.

– I did manage to leave the house a few times for a short while during the end of my convalescence. My inlaws took Isobel, Anthony and I to see the Chinese acrobats perform in Modesto. I was overly thrilled about this because it meant leaving the house and having adult conversations, and since Elias was staying with my Mom, we had unprecedented freedom. This is how pathetic I am right now. I told Anthony, this is kind of like a date night! And he said, “Yes. A date night with our daughter and my parents.” Whatever, I was glad. And it was a good night even though I spent most of the performance feeling tubercular and coughing into a hanky. Isobel loved it. She kept turning around and saying to me, “Mimi, I have never seen this before!” I know, kid! At one point two of a the acrobats, a man and a woman, were performing together and dancing very close together. It was quiet in the theater as we watched and Isobel chose that moment to quizzically ask, “Are they in love or what?”

– I mentioned Isobel’s new passion for making books before, and she’s still making them. Last week she made a book and wrote her first sentence ever! The only thing better than that is that the sentence was about me. On a heart-shaped piece of pink paper she carefully wrote “I see Mimi.” It is the best sentence in the history of writing.

– While texting Anthony a photo I found on the internet (it involved an old school NES), Isobel asked what I was doing. “I’m sending Daddy a message,” I replied, showing her the photo. “You shouldn’t send Daddy that photo,” she replied, rolling her eyes, “When you send a message to someone it should say, ‘I love you,’ or ‘Maybe we should marry each other’, or ‘Hey, look at this cute baby.'” I hope someday she writes an advice column.

– Much to Isobel’s relief, we drove to school while I was sick. She really doesn’t like walking to school. I know this because she reminds me on a daily basis, usually during the entire time we are making the journey. She can’t see the point of walking when we have a car. One morning her friend who lives on our street was hanging out in his front yard while we started our walk to school. As we passed we greeted each other and Isobel said, “My Mom likes to walk to school for some reason.”

– There’s a mountain lion making its way through our town. Sadly pushed far from home due to the double whammy of fire and drought, it’s been sighted near my parents’ house and residents have been urged to remain indoors. Hopefully it can be sedated and relocated but it’s eluded authorities so far. Just to reiterate, we are nowhere near the mountains. We live in the middle of the giant valley in California, surround by suburbs and farmland. The poor creature must be desperate to have wandered so far.

– Pumpkiny, the pumpkin we grew in our garden that Isobel became obsessed with and wanted to teach to live “like a human,” was lost for a few days and when he was discovered in our hot, dry garage had shrunk down to 10% of his original size. I think he’s still shrinking, actually. Isobel, lover of all things small and cute, has only become more obsessed and carries him around everywhere and tucks him in at night with his own little blanket. You do you, Isobel!

Thrifted leopard print romper. Wow, Troy rocks that romper! I am not normally a romper fan, but this is just about perfect. It’s a bit of a DIY, too, because she transformed the pants into shorts because there was a stain. Bravo.

The Ten Worst Movies Shown On MST3K. I have only seen four of these, so clearly I have to catch up, but how is Overdrawn at the Memory Banks not on here?! They give up at the end and make Raul Julia narrate stock footage of chimpanzees! Great read.